Be A Rebel, Keep Your Background Clean

June 13, 2017

4 min read

A clean background record can make a huge difference in the type of educational opportunities at your disposal and which jobs you can possibly hope to be hired at. Also, living a productive life with no criminal record influences the power of trust and respect you command. A hard working individual that is contributing to society and not causing pain, problems, and financial detriment to society has a myriad of great physical and emotional options open to them. You should do everything you can to stay out of trouble and work hard in order to open up doors to greater opportunity and happiness or even take the steps to clean up a record of mistakes that no longer reflect who you are as a person. To give you a better idea and more specific details on the advantages of living a clean life with no criminal history, here are five reasons to keep your background clean.

Getting a Good Job

Many job applications have a question concerning criminal background and whether you were convicted of a crime and the severity of the crime. This always creates an uncomfortable situation for someone with a felony record because they may be able to do the job really well and are truly reformed. They have the choice of lying or telling the truth. If they tell the truth, they may still get the job depending on the type of crime. If they lie, they may still get the job too. Then again, telling the truth may automatically bar them due to company policy, and if they lie, the job may still do a background check, which means they’ll lose their job for lying on the application. You can keep your record clean, stand a better chance of getting any job, and you will never have to take the gamble of lying on your application.

Applying for Loans

A criminal conviction and gaps in employment from not working hard, time in jail and a lack of ethics, tells any kind of creditors that a person is not dependable. When creditors believe someone is not dependable, it means they have no faith they will see their loaned money and interest. This consequence of a criminal record means buying a home, car or paying for school is difficult and more costly. Adding poor credit to the section above makes the future look nearly impossible.

Finding a Respectable Life Partner

The old saying of birds of a feather tend to flock together to describe people of ill repute is mostly accurate. How can someone who has lived with a spotty criminal past and an unproductive lifestyle hope to find someone who is a pillar of the community. People who respect the law and have a good work ethic hold their dating standards higher, so being unproductive and a criminal will not lead a person into a situation in which they can create an ideal, stable family.

Adoption

If you have a criminal record and want to give the gift to yourself and a child through adoption, you may either want to forget about it or trying getting your record expunged. Right now, there are 15 states that prevent people with a criminal record from adopting. It should also be noted that any conviction related to a minor is cannot be expunged, so those people will never be able to adopt.

Pride and Peace of Mind

Having no criminal record and working hard is something to be proud of even if media outlets do their best to blame systemic racism and the police for the choices people make of their own free will. If you came from a tough childhood and chose to not be criminal or associate with them, then you have not only beaten peer pressure but the pressure of pop culture, which is something younger people from the millennial generation and kids from Generation Z should be very proud of. Finally, if you do not commit crime and live a clean lifestyle, you never have to feel guilty or look over your shoulder for the police or other criminals.

It seems like the media is trying to wage war on the people who punish crime, and it also seems like they are creating a blame culture, especially blaming a certain race for the criminal choices freely made by others. It gives some people the idea they can live without integrity and immersed in crime, and they simply have to cry racism to get a crowd-funded lawyer, media coverage and instant fame. It may seem attractive and rebellious, but even if crime does actually pay, it does not pay in the long run. Working hard, avoiding crime and embracing traditional values is a good short and long-term investment.